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| Inside and outside: How Does the Square Shape the City?
International Conference As distinctively urban creations city squares attract particular activities by their accessibility and open un-built form; in fact, they create the very possibility of such activities. This is determined not least by the square's buildings and decorative elements but also by the streets and connecting thoroughfares, which constitute the space of the piazza. The modelling of the square as urban space, therefore, is subject to a wide range of factors, not least of which is the decisive caesura it has undergone in the modern era when it exerted its influence on the city by subordinating its surrounding walls to a series of spatially integrated sightlines and axes. Through this symposium we would like to position this double function of the piazza - its determination by the city on the one hand, its counter effects on the city on the other - at the centre of discussion. The space of the city square is by no means only a "stage"; rather, through specific means, constitutes and continually shapes the city's social relations. As exterior space the piazza becomes simultaneously an inside, whose elements the different forces in the city integrate into the public experience. Here, the relevant question concerns how different media (architecture, sculpture and other plastic arts, heraldry, ephemeral decorations, etc.) organise the square as space and how wider urban structures shape its form. At the same time the piazza binds itself, in its form, with the social and political orders of space (of the city, of the territory, of the nation, as well as other political formations). Constantly reworked and rearranged, there is, therefore, no particular point in time when it can be deemed a finished "work". It continually undergoes further transformations, modernizations, and reconfigurations, which always newly rebuild it as a complex urban space. Such spatial and temporal problems emerge clearly in research concerning the city square, where there is as yet little awareness of how the temporal potential of the piazza operates as a compositional factor. In this context, the goal of the conference is to initiate a methodologically reflective discussion on what constitutes the longue durée of the urban square. Therefore, no particular epochs or regions will be privileged so that, through contrasts and confrontations, the nature of the issues noted above becomes clearer. Organized by the research group "Piazza e monumento": Alessandro Nova, Cornelia Jöchner, Niall Atkinson, Brigitte Sölch, Stephanie Hanke, Sophie Huggler |
Date November 6th, 2008 to November 9th, 2008 Location Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz - Max-Planck-Institut Konferenzsaal / Sala confernze Via Giuseppe Giusti 38 50121 Florenz Contact Dr. Cornelia Jöchner E-mail: joechner@khi.fi.it Program Programm / Programma |
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